Sunday, January 29, 2012

The Shadow of Claude Dallas

Senseless, lawless violence -- government reduced to its essence: BLM
employee C.J. Ross commits a felonious assault on Nevada property
rights activist Ken Greenwell, in Palomino Valley, Nevada, November 13,
2001. Greenwell had staged a peaceful protest of the BLM's theft of
cattle belonging to rancher Ben Colvin. Ross, acting on behalf of the
rustlers, took offense. Note the contrast between Ross's snarling, feral
visage and the incredulous composure displayed by Greenwell, and ask
yourself: Which of these two displays the civilized face of freedom?

When they arrived at the cattle camp in Nevada’s Paradise
Valley, the three shabbily dressed men claimed that they were interested in a
job. Their timing was a bit odd; it was November, a little late in the year for
a ranch to take on new hires. As it happens, the visitors weren’t looking for
work as buckaroos; they were looking for the wiry, brown-haired ranch hand named
Claude.

“You’re Dallas, aren’t you?” one of the strangers, a man
named Frank Meale, asked the hand. When the young man replied that he was,
Meale-- an undercover FBI agent -- and his two comrades -- FBI agent George
Schwinn and Elko County Deputy Sheriff Noel McElhany – seized him, cuffed him,
and stuffed him into the worn-out pickup truck that had brought them to the
bunkhouse.

A few months earlier, Claude Dallas had been secretly
indicted by a federal grand jury, triggering a nation-wide manhunt by the FBI
and the U.S. Marshals Service. Dallas, an Ohio native, had drifted west to
Nevada, where he found work as a cowboy. Polite, disciplined, and literate,
Dallas distinguished himself by his appetite for honest work and his general
disdain for the dissipations available in local saloons. He was also
disinclined to talk about his background – a trait he shared with many others
who chose this itinerant lifestyle.

“Claude is true Old West,” commented rodeo champion Cortland
Nielsen. “A lot of guys try it, but the first time they have to shave with cold
water they change their mind. Claude keeps going after it and after it. He
should’ve been alive in the old days – a scout, the guy you send a day or two
ahead to tell you how things are. He’d be perfect.” A photographer from National Geographic agreed with that
assessment, which is how Dallas ended up being featured in a story entitled “The
American Cowboy in Life and Legend” – a clue not even the FBI could miss.

The officers who arrested Dallas said he was polite and
friendly. His captors didn’t reciprocate. Dallas was flown across the country,
frog-marched through airports in handcuffs and a belly chain. On his arrival in
Mt. Gilead, Ohio, he was thrown into a drunk tank, where he was singled out for
abuse by sheriff’s deputies.

Dallas was regarded as an exceptionally depraved offender: He
was a “draft dodger,” having refused induction in 1968. This isn’t because he
was afraid to fight, or unable to – a fact well understood by the predatory
bureaucrats who tracked him down.

“Most likely he’ll try to run, but he may try to shoot it
out,” Meale told the other two members of his snatch team just before the
abduction. “We’ll have to shut him right down.”

That “arrest” took place in November 1973 – nearly a year
after the Vietnam War officially ended. The indictment against Dallas had been
issued the previous July – a month after the draft was discontinued. Yet the
Feds insisted on stalking Dallas, humiliating him, abusing him, and trying to
put him in a cage. After the case against him was dismissed because of
procedural mistakes by the Mt. Gilead Draft Board, one of his kidnappers
promised that the persecution wouldn’t end.

“I’m gonna get you, Dallas – even if it’s just for tax
evasion,” the FBI agent hissed in his ear as the cowboy was released.

When Dallas returned to Paradise Valley, his fellow ranch
hands noticed an ominous change in his disposition.

“They wouldn’t have took me like this if they hadn’t got the
drop on me,” he fumed to friends in the bunkhouse. Dallas “was publicly heard to
swear that no one would ever outdraw him again – no one,” recounted Jack Olsen in his book Give a Boy a Gun. “One of his closest friends asked how he felt
about the draft and the Vietnam War. He said that he would fight for his
country if he were asked in a nice way, but `nobody’s gonna order me around.'”

Roughly seven years later, two Idaho fish and
game wardens – Bill Pogue, a former Winnemucca, Nevada police chief, and Conley
Elms – tracked down Dallas’s campsite about three miles on the Idaho side of
the Nevada border in Owyhee County. Dallas, who had spent several years working
intermittently as a ranch hand and trapper, had developed a reputation among
fish and game officials – and Pogue most likely considered himself just the man
to rein in the “renegade.”

Pogue, like other self-important martinets who see
themselves as indispensable cogs in the “mighty machine of the State,” was an
authoritarian prig who expected deference from Mundanes. Dallas, according to Jim
Stevens, an eyewitness to the January 5, 1981 confrontation, wasn’t unduly
impressed by the uniformed bureaucrat. Dallas, Stevens later recalled, possessed
“eyes that showed no fright.” This obviously wouldn’t turn out well for someone.

Ever since he had arrived in the West, Dallas had frequently
displayed an insouciant disregard for poaching laws. He had a handful of bobcat
hides in his camp. Although Dallas had a valid Idaho trapper’s license, bobcat
season wouldn’t open until January 9 – four days later. Pogue told Dallas that
he was going to be cited for possessing illegal hides and venison taken out of
season. Then, according to Stevens, Pogue said he would have to arrest Dallas.

Those words would prove to be a death warrant.

“Are
you going to take me in?” Dallas asked Pogue. At the time, Dallas and the two
game wardens stood at points of a triangle roughly five to six feet apart. At
some point, Pogue made a threatening gesture to his pistol. Stevens, who was
busy elsewhere in the camp, didn’t see what happened next – but he heard the
unmistakable report of a handgun, and whirled around to see Dallas in a shooter’s
crouch, and a bloodstain spreading across Pogue’s chest. A fraction of a second
later, Dallas shot Elms as well.

The wardens almost certainly died instantly. Nevertheless,
Dallas delivered a coup de grace to each of them with a .22 rifle.

Stevens would later testify that the wardens did not
threaten Dallas’s life “in any way.” This isn’t true: Every demand made by a
government official contains the implicit threat of lethal violence against those
who refuse to comply. This was particularly true of the armed strangers who
threatened to kidnap
Dallas at gunpoint – something not mandated by what they called the law, but
made necessary by Bill Pogue’s punitive nature.

“Nobody has the right to come into my camp and violate my
rights,” Dallas insisted as Stevens absorbed the bloody aftermath of the
encounter. “In my mind it’s justifiable homicide.”

Many people in Idaho and throughout the Intermountain West
agreed with that evaluation during the lengthy manhunt and high-profile trial
that followed the killings. The arrest was illegitimate, which meant that
Dallas – under the Bad Elk precedent
– had the right to use lethal force in self-defense. He didn’t ambush the
wardens; he was outnumbered by armed, truculent men, and outdrew them.

It is true that Dallas had been poaching hides and game.
Consider this: Seven years earlier, the Feds had seized him out of season, as
it were, by arresting him after Congress had rescinded the hunting license it
had granted the draft-nappers. There’s no moral case to be made for the
proposition that poaching game is a crime, but poaching human beings is sound
and defensible public policy.

Claude Dallas was not a saint, but he only became a killer
when he was cornered by gun-wielding government employees who most likely would
have found some way to validate the FBI agent’s threat: The Federal
Government would find some way to “get him,” no matter how trivial the
violation.

The lethal encounter between Dallas and the Idaho game
wardens “fundamentally changed the relationship between the West and those
charged with preserving its resources,” opined
the Twin Falls Times-News in an
editorial clotted with collectivist assumptions (derived from the notion that the
earth is the State’s and the fullness thereof). “Before Jan. 5, 1981, we had
wilderness rangers; ever since we’ve had wilderness policemen. The conservation
officer who checks your fishing license nowadays is more likely than not to be
armed.”

Of course, this isn’t a novelty, given that the wardens who
threatened to kidnap Dallas were carrying weapons and prepared to use them. The
most important difference is that most wilderness “policemen” have adopted the
swaggering, imperious disposition of William Pogue.

Consider the case of Chico, California resident Jeff Newman, 53, a life-long avid skier who operates
a painting business. As a sideline, Newman "tunes" skis and teaches others how to perform
this kind of maintenance.

With
the exception of a decade he spent in the employment of the Forest Service
(more appropriately called the Sylvan Socialist agency, or SS), Newman has made
an honest living. In early 2010, Newman and some friends he had met in the
employ of the SS visited Colby Meadows in the Lassen National Forest, one
of their favorite skiing destinations.

Years
earlier, Newman and his friends built a bulletin board -- with the permission
of the SS -- on which could be posted maps and emergency information. During
their recent visit, one of Newman's friends, Larry Chrisman, posted an
advertisement for Newman's ski tuning service on the otherwise vacant bulletin
board.

Newman
commanded the armed intruder to leave his property. Zohovetz, already guilty of
criminal trespass, compounded the crime by threatening to attack Newman with a
deadly weapon by pointing his Taser at the man's face and neck.

That’s
right: Even the Regime's forest rangers are now equipped with portable electro-shock torture
devices.

"He
had this look in his eyes like he wanted to beat the crap out of me,"
Newman recalled. A diabetic who suffers from permanent nervous system damage,
Newman was understandably concerned that a Taser attack would kill him. So as
any rational person would, he fled into his house. His deranged assailant,
badly overestimating his physical prowess, tried to kick down the door,
succeeding only in leaving a muddy footprint.

Newman
called Chrisman to his home as a witness. Zohovetz, having failed in his effort
to bully the mild-mannered Newman by himself, called for backup from the local
police department. After his friend arrived, Newman emerged from the house,
only to be handcuffed. As a result of not taking insulin yet that day, he went
into convulsions.

Satisfied
that he'd made whatever point he sought to make, Zohovetz released Newman and
told him that he was only issuing a "warning" regarding the flier. He also issued a
citation for "threatening an officer," a charge that carries a six
month jail sentence and a $5,000 fine.

The
appropriately named SS spokesman John Heil insisted that Zohovetz behaved
appropriately by driving 50 miles to issue a "warning" and then
needlessly escalating a trivial matter into a life-threatening confrontation.

When
the case went to trial in March 2011, U.S. District Court Magistrate Craig M.
Kellison ruled that Zohovetz “had no right to remain on Newman’s property once
he had been ordered to leave.” He also cited a Supreme Court precedent
acknowledging that the “freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge
police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal
characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”

It’s
all but certain that those in the leadership echelons of SS are aware of the
outcome of that case – and it’s just as likely that they have made a conscious
decision to ignore it. This would explain a nearly fatal incident involving SS
officer Shawn Tripp that took place in Montana’s Little Belt Mountains last
November 26.

Bill and Tammie McCutcheon, residents of Roundup, Montana,
were on a hunting trip with their four children – two teenagers and
18-month-old twins. Tammie, along with her 12-year-old daughter and
the twins, had pulled over to the side of the road while Bill and the couple’s
teenage son gone into the nearby forest.

Tripp,
who was patrolling on a four-wheeler, approached the truck from behind. Tammie told
the Billings Gazette that she
initially thought Tripp, who was wearing a jacket with no insignia identifying
himself as a federal officer, was another hunter. When she asked Tripp who he
was, the SS officer “refused to identify himself and demanded that she get out
of the truck.”

Things became immediately and dramatically worse, recounts
the Gazette. Tripp began “questioning
her about whether they had driven past the `road closed’ sign…. Tammie
McCutcheon said she was worried about her twins alone in the truck but was
trying to respond to Tripp's questions. The encounter escalated, Tammie
McCutcheon said, when Tripp tried to remove a hunting tag from the
antlers of a deer in the back of the couple's truck. Tammie McCutcheon
said she believed Tripp had no authority to remove the tag, and she grabbed it
from his hand, bumping against him as she reached for the tag.”

Owing to the State supremacist indoctrination he had received,
Tripp perceived that incidental contact as the high and grievous crime – nay,
sin – of “assaulting a federal official.” Accordingly, he grabbed the terrified
mother, threw her up against the truck, and roughly cuffed her hands behind her
back. He then shoved her face-down on the open tailgate and began to paw the
shrieking woman beneath her clothes.

Tripp might consider this a “search”; by any rational definition,
it was a sexual assault by an armed stranger who had spit out several angry
demands but refused to identify himself (not that doing so would have justified
his actions).

“I
thought I was going to get raped," Tammie later recalled. The noise
attracted the attention of her husband Bill, who had reached the top of a small
nearby hill – and looked down to see, from about 100 yards away, a man on
top of his wife as she screamed for help.

Hurrying
down the hill, Bill ordered the assailant to leave his wife alone. As Tripp
later admitted on the record, the properly infuriated husband never pointed his
rifle at him – even though he would have been well within his legal and moral
rights to use lethal force to stop the assault. Tripp, however, drew his pistol
and pointed it at Bill, ordering him to drop his rifle. At one point, according
to Tammi, the “unstable” and “muttering” SS enforcer pointed his sidearm at the
couple’s 12-year-old daughter.

A
call for assistance issued by Tripp was answered by Wheatland County Sheriff
Jim Rosenberg, who was hunting nearby. The Sheriff, who should have arrested Tripp for aggravated armed assault and sexual battery, chose instead to arrest Bill, who was held
in jail for five days before being released. Significantly, in an interview
with an investigator hired by the McCutcheons’ attorney, Sheriff Rosenberg was
told by Tripp that Bill never pointed the rifle at him.

Nonetheless,
Bill and Tammie were indicted in federal court on January 26 on charges that
they “forcefully assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and
interfered” with Tripp. Bill McCutcheon faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000
fine; Tammie – whose “crime” consisted of protecting herself from a sexual
assault, could be sentenced to 8 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

During
a dispute over the SS’s actions in closing down a road in Nevada’s Elko County
a decade ago, the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade, a
local citizen’s group ran a radio ad describing the agency’s personnel as
“armed and dangerous.”

“The
Forest Service has a new policy of issuing citations for the following offense:
Operating any vehicle off road in a manner which damages or unreasonably
disturbs the land, wildlife or vegetative resources,” observed the radio spot.
“If apprehended by Forest Service personnel, consider them armed and dangerous
and cooperate with them to the fullest. Then contact the Jarbidge Shovel
Brigade for assistance.”

That
prompted a petulant complaint from the SS that the ads were “inflammatory” and
tended to promote “ill will” toward the agency. Oh, dearie dear – we can’t have
that, can we?

Like
Jeff Newman – who was once employed by the agency -- Bill and Tammie McCutcheon
can testify of the indisputable truth of the characterization offered by the Shovel
Brigade. Their experiences also underscore the wisdom of having the means to
defend one’s self and one’s family in the event one encounters a predatory Fed
in the wilderness – or, as Newman’s case demonstrates, in one’s own home.

For killing the two wardens who tried to kidnap him, Claude Dallas eventually served 22 years for voluntary
manslaughter. The foreman of the jury that convicted Dallas later said that he would have been acquitted of
all charges if he hadn’t delivered what was most likely a gratuitous coup de
grace. The Regime remembers those details. We should, as well.

Obiter Dicta

Owing to travel, unanticipated difficulties on the home front (Korrin is doing much better now; my earnest thanks to everyone who has expressed their concerns on her behalf), and my responsibilities over at Republic magazine, posting here has been sporadic as of late. I appreciate your patience, and your continued material support. I'm generally posting at least one short piece -- sometimes two or more -- each day at republicmagazine.com. Please drop by and sign up for your free digital subscription!

Some of you have asked when Pro Libertate Radio will return. I'm still in search of an appropriate platform; I'll let you know as soon as the right arrangements have been made.

This story probably puts a chill down the spine of donut molesting, pencil pushers who fancy themselves rough and tumble drug or crime warriors. At least you weren't filesharing since filesharing is terrorism.

I'm sorry to see you spending your time at the republic magazine. I don't wish to "register" for anything and so can't see much of the content. The "sample issue" I did try to look at began a big download, which I won't tolerate either.

If the magazine is "free," why require registration? That doesn't make any sense.

Mr. Grigg,Just listened to your interview with Lew. You are one of the very few who when asked about the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki, remembers to mention the murder of his 16 yr. old son.

I have not heard any official justification for the "execution" of this juvenile. The Supreme Court has ruled in Roper v. Simmons that persons under the age of 18 have diminished capacity and thus the death penalty for juveniles is cruel and unusual.

So, despite the legal arguments for and against murdering Anwar, there is absolutely no legitimate argument for murdering a 16 year old juvenile with diminished capacity. Of course the argument will be that he was not the "intended" target, but of course this is all a matter of state security and top secret.

Like you, I am very alarmed about the abuse of executive power in the U.S., but am growing more and more alarmed about the lack of response by our Supreme Court which is supposed to act as a check and balance on the abuse of our Bill of Rights. They are sitting on their hands and doing nothing. They use "standing" arguments to avoid the appearance of being reactionary, but in fact are using it to avoid the issues all together.

If the Supreme Court continues to stand mute, then there is no check or balance whatsoever. They are the ones we should be railing against.

WillB, It's indeed a sad indictment of the "system" that it stands mute in the face of such evil but you can lay all the blame at their feet for either allowing or actively promoting things to get this far. It is what it is. Spooner said as much about the Constitution which is routinely violated because it essentially does not bind them unless they wish to be bound. And when have you ever known these psychopaths to restrain themselves unless by a direct mortal threat?

MoT Indeed. Just gazing at the public arena in the US you would not suspect there exists any legal restraint on the legislature or the executive. I think the USSR had a supreme tribunal, but you never heard anything of substance from it. Just a shadowy background figure.

Here in New England we had our own Claude Dallas - his name was Carl Drega. People that knew him - said he was not someone you wanted to provoke. Yet if left alone - he did not harm anyone. However Scott Phillips the trooper who instigated the shoot out (and lost) with Drega was well known in the community as an arrogant person. Unfortunately he chose to bully a man who on the face of it seemed "easy" yet behind the facade was one tough bastard. He should have known better than to pick a fight with a heavily armed, union pipefitter, who cherished his property rights. The outcome was predetermined before the bullying even commenced.

i have read everything to do with claude dallas. i was 15 when that actually happened and it came out in an outdoor life magazine. just know that there are still some of us left with that polite independent spirit who practice our rights even in the east. i loved claude dallas and live not too far from where he was born and lived in his early years (Winchester, Virginia.)

I was a cowboy (buckaroo) who worked in that same country as Claude and on at least one of the ranches he did also both before and after the incident.

When they came to take him he did what every American should be doing now when swat teams come to harass us - he pulled out his six shooter and blew them both away!

Good for you Claude. Good shooting! I've worked with those who you worked for and I know the country you were taken from. I punched the same cows you did although we never met. I've thought about what you did for years now. Some people say you did right and and others say you did wrong and maybe you even thought so too at times while sitting in prison.

Well, given the way I've seen things deteriorate in this land and the lawlessness of the government, courts and police agencies, I'd say you did the right thing. You were ahead of your time not behind the times.

The thing that was wrong about this whole deal was that nobody backed you up. A million Americans should have gone to war, for you were a call to arms that they didn't hear.

Your twisted dreamland reasoning runs in the face of the simple facts of the law and reality. The tradeoff for enjoying a secure life in a civilized society is that you allow the authorities a monopoly of coercion through force. Get it? You cannot defy, much less murder, law officers in the commission of their duties. Got a beef with how they're doing their jobs? Take it to court, like the rest of us. You have no "property rights" on public land. Your personal sovereignty mountain man libertarian la-la-land BULLSHIT is nothing short of sociopathic, in the literal sense. Look it up. Get a clue. You're not as special as you think you are. You're just another citizen who has to live by the rules like the rest of us. Don't like it? Go live by yourself, and I do mean BY YOURSELF...but wait, that's not really possible, it it? GUESS YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO SUCK IT UP AND MEET THE EXPECTATIONS OF MODERN SOCIETY LIKE THE REST OF US, HUH? "Good for you?" "Good shooting?" You make me want to vomit. Ugh.

The tradeoff for enjoying a secure life in a civilized society is that you allow the authorities a monopoly of coercion through force

Not being a Leninist, I don't subscribe to the idea that government should enjoy "power without limit, resting directly on force" -- and neither did the authors of the Second Amendment, who not only defied "law officers in the commission [sic] of their duties," but shot and killed them when it was morally appropriate to do so.

While you extol the virtue of "liv[ing] by the rules like the rest of us" while embracing a doctrine that elevates the state's dispensers of officially licensed violence above the people whom they supposedly serve. That view is certainly "modern," but it's hardly civilized.

Claude Dallas is nothing more than a cowardly little SOB that got off lightly for the cold-blooded murder of 2 law enforcement officers, period. Nothing about this scumbag should be revered. Chicken-shit little cop killers hiding under the blanket of "living free" are nothing more than chicken-shit criminals no matter how "patriotic" they want to be.

Somebody who outdraws two armed, trained LEOs and then holds off their allies for months all by himself can't be described as a "coward."

If Dallas had rendered aid to Pogue and Elms, rather than dispatching them like wounded game animals, he would -- and should -- have been acquitted of all charges on the grounds of self-defense.

You must have been sleeping in grade school while the rest of us were learning about the "cop-killers" who precipitated the War for Independence by opening fire on law enforcement officers at Lexington Green. Tax-feeders in government-issued costumes aren't sanctified beings, and our history demonstrates that there are some occasions when killing an LEO is both morally justified, and patriotic.

"Outdraws"...so you believe his lightning reflexes prevailed as they all simultaneously slapped leather just like in your favorite movies and your hero-wetdreams, huh? A pussy like Dallas doesn't fight fairly like you imagine; such a pansy flower would sneak-shoot unsuspecting humans because he wanted to protect his "right" to steal from other citizens because his desires were worth more than human lives. He is a sociopath, plain and simple. You with your simple-minded fantasies are pathetic. You're both effing losers. Here's hoping you both die in jail.

Examine the brown-shirted tax-feeder in the photograph at the top of that blog. There is the face of a true coward and sociopath, the kind of cretinous thug who believes that a government-issued costume gives him the right to threaten, or kill, one of his unarmed betters.

Dallas was outnumbered, and Pogue -- a fool and bully who got himself and another man killed for no good reason -- threatened to shoot Dallas, as the only eyewitness on the scene testified. Dallas didn't "sneak-shoot" the two "heroes" who had come to arrest him, and had deployed themselves in such a way that he had to get off two shots very quickly. That he was a very quick and accurate draw was well-documented, and it explains why the manhunt following the killings was conducted the way it was.

On the topic of adolescent deviance of the kind that eroticizes the use of deadly force, consider how police trainer Dave Grossman encourages officers to see the killing of a Mundane as an aphrodisiac:

"Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex [following a deadly force incident]. There’s not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.”

In that specific seminar, which was video-recorded for the recent documentary "Do Not Resist," Grossman concluded by encouraging the superannuated adolescents in his audience to indulge their superhero vigilante fantasies, telling them to find an overpass overlooking the cities they afflict, then grab a railing lean forward, and "let your cape blow in the wind."

People whose otherwise uncluttered minds are filled with fantasies of that sort aren't fit for the company of the decent people upon whose honest earnings they subsist.

Cops, like any field of endeavor even crack pot hero worshipping violence pushers, vary in talent at their job. Think of it like high school students. On the one side of the continuum you have those students who want to learn for learning's sake, let's call them "A Students". On the other end you have the type who "don' care bout no book lerning", let's call them "D-Students". The vast majority are somewhere in the middle, but in any group there are going to be the inferior student. It's that way with every profession and it is inevitable that with a profession like police or ranger there are going to be bad seeds, but that doesn't mean you can generalize to the entire profession. In other words, you can point to anecdotes of some idiot who is a cop when he or she shouldn't be in that position. The reality however is that civil society relies on police who are there to protect society from sociopaths like Claude Dallas. Your hyperbole and bigotry against a profession you don't appreciate probably stems from you, like Dallas, feel that your "rights" supersede those of everyone living in this country. You pretend that not believing in your mountain-man fantasy somehow makes everyone but you and that murderer Dallas stupid when in fact it just makes it glaringly obvious you are simply a deranged misfit, or like Dallas a skulking, sneaking jackal with no humanity.

One cannot be bigoted -- as that term is commonly understood -- against a profession, despite the puling protests of police unions that people in that occupation should be treated as a "specially protected class." Since every police officer -- from "A student" to "D student" -- is invested with the spurious legal entitlement called "qualified immunity," they already are a specially protected class.

Roughly ten percent of police officers are incorrigible, depraved people; perhaps half that number are genuinely honorable people. The rest are careerists in an occupation that renders no measurable benefit to society -- and whose performance expectations are calibrated to protect the depraved ten percent, rather than to cultivate the qualities of the relatively admirable five percent.

Law enforcement is an anti-social activity. Police are not required to protect the persons and property of individual citizens; any benefits of that kind provided by them are incidental to their chief mission, which is to enforce the edicts of the political class, at the expense of the productive.

Consider this: If police "serve" the public by protecting us, why are there between three and five times as many private security officers as there are sworn LEOs? Spoiler: This is because people who want that protection must pay for it, in addition to being taxed to support the state's armed enforcement caste.

It has been known for more than four decades (Google the Law Enforcement Foundation's Kansas City Police Experiment) that police patrols have no measurable impact on the rate of violent crime. Since police do nothing to protect people, either the individual or in the aggregate, their "services" are something we can do without -- unless law enforcement were dramatically reconfigured to serve a reactive function akin to police departments (and, most importantly, subjected to criminal and civil liability on precisely the same terms as the rest of us).

Not surprisingly, law enforcement is an occupation that selects for the stupid and the sociopathic, and the behavioral profile of a "super cop" is very close kindred to that of a super predator (see https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=181019).

One illustration of this tendency is found in the well-documented fact that spouses and partners of LEOs are twice as likely to be the victims of domestic violence -- and the first priority of police investigating such crimes is loyalty to the Blue Brotherhood, not to protect the victim and hold the perp accountable (see http://www.policemag.com/channel/patrol/articles/2005/02/a-family-affair.aspx)

If we were to assume that Dallas was a "sociopath," his romanticized self-image and capacity for impenitent violence would have put him in good stead if he had chosen to become a police officer. From what I've been able to learn, Elms was a careerist, and Pogue was the kind of person Dallas would have been if Dallas had insisted on bullying others from behind a shield of "qualified immunity." People like that have a talent for getting other people killed, needlessly. Law enforcement hasn't cornered the market on that personality type, but it is exceptionally over-represented in the ranks of the state's punitive priesthood.

Sorry, I didn't read much of the religious screed with which you replied. What I read in the first 2-4 lines made it clear you are an anarchist and that you are mentally unhinged, either of which traits disqualify you for discussion about civil society. Somehow your paranoia has morphed into a superiority complex where you believe your ideas and opinions were those of the founding fathers. Though the way you adhere to those written words as your moral authority is bizarre; I suppose it's just a part of your mental illness, just as my pointing out that you are probably mentally incompetent will probably be to you another example of how society oppresses you. The direction your sociopathy takes is disturbing since you celebrate the deaths of two humans at the hands of the coward Dallas. I take solace in the fact that you're probably in jail.

I understand entirely why you are desperate to find some self-serving way to opt out of a debate with me: Why does the baloney avoid the slicer, after all? :-)Your preferred approach, by your own admission, is to ignore what your interlocutor says while polluting the air with petulant, adolescent abuse. If you're not a cop, you certainly fit the personality type, which is to say that you're manifestly unsuitable for the company of productive people.

As pointed out above, the American Founding Fathers were a group of men who took up arms against the enforcement caste of the government that ruled them. The first martyr to the cause of American independence, Crispus Attucks, was a black "felon" (as an escaped slave, he "stole" himself) who was killed while attempting to disarm a Redcoat, i.e. a law enforcement officer. Interestingly, Captain Preston and his squad were put on trial for murder after the Boston Massacre, unlike contemporary LEOs who can kill and abuse people with something akin to impunity.

You aren't engaging in any discussion with me, you are just spouting your deranged beliefs, repeating your religious mantra to yourself to "prove" your point just by restating it, as if your dark paranoia is justified by the fact that you are darkly paranoid.

Discussion is pointless with an insane person and you are clearly mentally disturbed. I don't debate with people like you who do not have a grasp of reality; since you are not really "debating" anything, I'm just stepping out of this forum, sort of like choosing not to step in dog shit. But you should stay here (think of it as an extension of your prison cell) where you feel safe, however; like-minded failures, criminals and sick hermits who imagine themselves to be "patriots" will applaud your anti-social, sociopath-philosophy and anti-American diatribes and you'll feel better about yourself, which might reduce your symptoms. You have a lot in common with Ted Kaczynski; it would be equally pointless to reason with you as it would be to do so with him. Neither of you will ever see things rationally. Bye.

You're certainly correct in saying that this was neither a discussion nor a debate. Those terms refer to an exercise in which two people exchange ideas, buttressing them with relevant factual citations when disagreement occurs.

In this colloquy (however one wishes to describe it) only one of us has proceeded in that fashion. Spoiler alert: It wasn't you. :-)